Soulmates (17 page)

“I'm so sorry about everything that's happened,” I said after we stopped in front of the airport. It was around six
A
.
M
., and Ray's was the only car idling.

Ray sighed and ran his hand over his mouth, like he was wiping something away. “I'll manage,” he said. “I always do.”

I leaned over and gave him a sideways hug. He patted my arm gently. I pulled back and grabbed my bag from the floor, got out of the car, closed the passenger door, and stood on the sidewalk. Ray's car sat there for a moment, so I waved at him. He looked over at me, and I detected a little bit of tenderness around his eyes. He gave me a salute with two fingers of his left hand and drove off.

The second I saw his car pull away, I went into the airport, got my ticket, and settled in at the gate. Unlike at JFK or LaGuardia, there were only a handful of people around me. I knew from flying into Bozeman that most of the flights out of this airport were on small, rickety shuttle planes, so there weren't that many seats to fill.

As I sat in the Scotchgarded airport bucket chair, I started to sweat. It seemed to be coming disproportionately from my left armpit. My face flushed, too. What the fuck was I doing? This was potentially dangerous and definitely weird.

On instinct I called Beth. “Dana! I'm so happy you finally called,” she said, sounding truly elated. “Are you still in Montana?”

“Yes, I'm at the airport.” This was true, if incomplete information.

“Oh, great. I can pick you up if you need me to. When does your flight get in?”

“Uh. Well.” I took a deep breath. “Beth, I'm not coming back to New York right now.”

“Where are you going?” Beth's voice became small and tight. I recognized that tenor from when our parents would fight and she'd crawl into bed with me.

“I'm going back to New Mexico,” I said, trying to sound confident.

“Why would you do that?” Beth sounded earnest and confused.

“I need to talk to the sheriff more,” I said, and I thought I heard her sigh with relief. I briefly considered not telling her the whole story, but that felt unfair. So I added, “And I need to go back to the retreat for myself.”

“Dana!” Beth cried. “That's a fucking terrible idea. Why would you go back there?”

“It's a long story. I'll tell you when I get back,” I said. Beth's warning had the perverse effect of making me more confident about my trip.
She doesn't understand what's going on
. My sane self said:
Of course she doesn't understand, because I'm not telling her any of the details
. But I pushed that voice down.

And I wasn't lying to her. I was going back to New Mexico, and not just to figure out what happened in Ethan's final days. I was going back because I thought I could do good work with Lo. Underneath the New Age jargon, something real had happened
for me at Zuni. Maybe with more work, I could find out what happened to the real Dana, too.

Beth took a deep breath. “Dana, I'm really scared for you. I don't think you should go back there. You've been evasive and weird since you heard about Ethan's death. You're not acting like yourself at all. We haven't even talked about your taking leave from your job.”

“Bethy, it'll be fine,” I said, not even sure if that was true. But I had to tell myself that to go forward. “Don't you trust my judgment?”

“Yes?” Beth said totally unconvincingly.

In my most soothing, fearless big-sister voice, I said, “Good. I love you. I'll call you when I'm heading back to New York.”

“I love you, too, Dana.” Beth sounded resigned. “Just promise me you'll be careful.”

“I'm always careful.”

When I arrived at the Albuquerque airport, I saw a woman in a loose lavender shirt and matching trousers holding up a piece of paper with my name on it in bubble letters. When I saw her, I remembered that Yoni had a thing for young blondes. This woman had luminous skin, too, and even though she wasn't conventionally beautiful, she had striking emerald eyes. She reminded me of Amaya. At this thought my brisk walk slowed down a little. How was I coming back to this? But I was already here in New Mexico; I needed to keep going.

When I approached the woman, she shook my hand. Her handshake was as flaky as she appeared to be—she just placed her hand limply in mine. “I'm Juniper. I'll be driving you.”

I pumped her hand vigorously. “Nice to meet you.”

She removed her hand from my grip and smiled a warm but empty grin at me. “Follow me. The car's parked nearby.”

I followed her outside to a gleaming white van, which looked like a stereotypical pedophile's getaway car, except that it was clean and new instead of rusted out and decades old. I opened the passenger door and saw a clear crystal dangling from the rearview mirror, but other than that, the inside was entirely uncluttered. It smelled a little odd, like a combination of lavender and body odor. Or maybe that was Juniper.

As we turned out of the airport Juniper beamed at me. “I'm so excited for you,” she said. “That you get to experience this for the first time!”

“I've actually been to the retreat before,” I said. “But I'm looking forward to being back and studying even harder.”

“Oh, this is really, really different from the regular retreat. I don't want to spoil it. You'll see!” She got onto the highway still beaming, this time as she checked the rearview mirror. I think the only time I've ever looked so happy was on my wedding day. I briefly wondered if she was high, and felt the strap of my seat belt to make sure it was untwisted and ready to engage.

The drive to the retreat wended through a lush national forest: verdant mountains, rushing rivers, natural dams, scenic overlooks—the whole nine yards. It reminded me of the better moments in my childhood. There are so many lakes in Minnesota, and Beth and I loved it when our dad would take us on fishing and hiking trips. Managing our mother's mood swings felt like a full-time job, and so when we were away from her and in nature, we really felt we could blossom.

I was still musing about the distant past when we went from the verdant forest to a more arid climate, cacti and sage lining the dusty road. “There's the regular retreat,” Juniper chirped as we drove past the turnoff. “The upper-level retreat is thirty minutes from here.”

Sure enough, about half an hour farther down the two-lane highway, we took a turnoff that was almost imperceptible from the main road. It was shrouded in high shrubbery and cacti and there was no signage or any other kind of indication that there was a residence nearby. The road was narrow and deeply rutted, so even if you had mistakenly turned off on it, you'd probably turn right back around. I tried to swallow a nervous ball that rose in my throat.

It took twenty more minutes of slow, careful driving before we reached a circular yurt squatting out in a sparsely covered, pebble-filled field. As we pulled up to the yurt, a man walked out of the structure and waved at us. Juniper jumped out of the car like a sprightly woodland creature, and I galumphed out, hoisting my bag along with me.

As the man got closer I recognized his unusual, handsome face: Janus, my yoga teacher from my first visit. He enveloped me in a hug. “I'm so glad to see you, Dana,” he said. “I'll take you to the main house. Junie's going to take the car back.”

“Have a wonderful time,” Juniper said, also giving me a hug. They were bigger on hugging here than they were at Zuni Regular, I noticed.

I followed Janus along the rutted road, which after a few turns became a cobblestone walkway. After five minutes on the walkway, the main building, a modern pueblo revival, rose up
from the ground all of a sudden, like a mirage that a starving wanderer would see in the Sahara in old-fashioned cartoons.

The pueblo was an off-white color, almost a pale yellow, and it was just one sprawling story. Like some of the buildings at the Zuni Retreat, it was oriented around a courtyard, and through the open front door I could see a few residents doing yoga there. The reception area had what looked to be hand-painted lapis tiled floors, like the kind you see in Morocco or Turkey.
Lama Yoni's cash reserves must be huge,
I thought, feeling another twinge of nerves.

Another young woman—clad in that same lavender color—was manning the front desk. “Coral, can you tell us who is reading Dana's energy today?” Janus asked. Coral looked down at her computer screen. I tried to angle myself so I could see what was on it, but I couldn't bend toward it without seeming obvious. “I have her down for a reading with Gaia,” Coral said.

“Ah. The first thing we have for you is to get your energy read by one of our experts. This will help us learn where to place you in our residential buildings. It will also help us come up with a set of appropriate classes for you.”

I nodded and said nothing. If I was going to learn anything about Ethan, I had to accept that I would be buffeted along from charlatan to charlatan. Someone had to have taught him all that numerology he spouted in his self-help book. Hopefully Janus wasn't going to lead me down a narrow hallway into a room full of nude men.

“I'm sensing a bit of resistance from you, Dana,” Janus said. “You were so gung ho at Zuni. Remember, your admission to this next level is a privilege.” He looked me right in the eye, and I felt
like he was trying to bore into my thoughts. I squirmed a little under the scrutiny.

“Oh, no. I'm really excited about this,” I assured him, trying to soften the intensity of his gaze. “It's just a lot to take in.”

“Good. Because if you're coming to our process with any negative energy, it will really hurt your progress. We want you to get the most out of this experience. It's a very special thing.”

“I know. That's why I wanted to come.” I summoned every ounce of sweetness within me to respond. I had to remember why I was here—it wasn't for the spiritual jargon about energy. It was for Lo's guidance. I couldn't wait to get into her class again.

“Wonderful,” Janus said, breaking out that blinding grin of his. “I know just how special it is myself. I'm actually a little jealous of you, getting to experience everything for the first time!” It was like he and Juniper were reading from the same internal script. “Follow me,” he added.

We walked down a long tiled corridor. The walls flanking me were painted a terra-cotta color, and they had pictures of Hindu or Buddhist deities in expensive-looking gold frames. I didn't see or hear a single soul. “It's so quiet,” I whispered, taking smaller steps than I usually did so that I would slow down to Janus's languid pace.

“You arrived during one of our midday silences,” Janus said.

“Oh,” I whispered. “I thought the silence was in the morning?”

“That's just at the Zuni Retreat. The rules here are different, but you will learn them in time.”

We arrived at a door with a wheel the size of my hand painted on it. I counted six spokes on the wheel, and Janus knocked six times in a particular pattern before a woman opened the door.

She was probably in her forties, but it was hard to tell because she was in magnificent shape. She had the slender yet muscular frame of yoga and Pilates instructors, and was wearing light purple, like the others. She looked into my eyes and then bowed. Feeling a little silly, I bowed back. Janus also bowed, and stayed in that bent position as he walked backward several steps. Once he saw me move toward the woman, he turned and walked away. I put my bag on the ground near the door.

Everything in the room was low to the ground. There were no chairs, just large cushions and throw pillows on the floor. The place obviously had the same lysergic-acid-addled decorator who did the Zuni Retreat décor. The woman gestured for me to sit on one of the cushions. I tried to plop down on a purple-fringed pillow but I missed the center, so I teetered off to the side before righting myself. The woman sat down gracefully in the center of her personal cushion. “Namaste,” she said, putting her hands together and pointing them toward me.

“Namaste,” I parroted back.

“My name is Gaia. I know you are Dana. As you take your journey with us, you may find that you are given a new name by our wonderful spiritual leader. But that's all in good time.” She smiled.

I didn't know how to respond to that, so I said nothing and waited for her to continue. But she didn't. She sat staring at me with a completely serene expression on her face for what felt like minutes. I thought about Ethan's first connection with Yoni, when he was made to stand alone in a room and look deeply into the guru's eyes until he felt like he was going to crack up. This seemed like one of the group's standard tests of devotion,
a test I was not about to fail. So I remained silent until Gaia said, “We're here to do an energy reading, so that we can figure out the best individualized program for you.”

“Yes, Janus told me,” I said.

She closed her eyes and let out a sigh with a
hmmm
sound. “I'm already feeling significant blockage from you. But a lot of people have big blockages when they first arrive at the retreat. I'm glad you're here. You need these practices in your life.” She opened her eyes and reached for a red lacquered tray that contained a bunch of stones and crystals of various sizes and colors. “I'd like you to choose a crystal. Close your eyes and move your hands over the tray. When you feel a tingling or a burning sensation, pick up that crystal.”

I had to try my hardest not to laugh. When Beth and I played Ouija board when we were children, I always tricked her into thinking our dead grandmother was behind the board, answering her questions and planning on haunting her forever. This felt like it had as much credence as the Ouija board.

My mouth was twitching with the effort of suppressing a smile when my hand quivered from nerves. I lowered my hand, scooped up a crystal, and opened my eyes.